1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of event notification systems. More particularly, the invention provides an event notification system that provides rapid notifications in large-scale networks.
2. Description of Related Art
Event notification systems provide content and information to entities connected to an event notification source. In one prior art example, current news events are delivered to users connected to the Internet. Each user subscribes to the event notification source. When the event notification source becomes aware of a current news event, the event notification source reviews the list of subscriptions and sends an event notification to each subscribed user.
Typical wide area network (WAN) event notification systems include single source distribution trees and distribution trees having fixed structures. For example, an event notification is generated at a single node and then distributed throughout the tree in a predetermined manner. Drawbacks of such systems are that the rigid distribution mechanisms do not compensate for changing load conditions or allow users to customize delivery features. One example is a news event service that transmits news alerts through a network to a group of subscribers. Some nodes may experience overloading while other nodes are underutilized. As a result it can take up to a week for all of the subscribers to receive the news alert.
Existing local area network (LAN) event notification systems sometimes provide rapid event notifications to all subscribers. Such systems utilize the underlying broadcast communication mode of the network transport. As a result, existing LAN event notification systems are not scalable and cannot be used with wide area networks.
There exists a need in the art for a flexible event notification system that provides efficient event notifications to users connected to a wide area or large-scale network.